‘The Leftovers’ Knows You Want Answers in Season 3

The third and final season of HBO‘s contemplative apocalyptic drama The Leftovers premieres on Sunday, and you can feel the anxiety thick in the air from the opening minutes. The Leftovers has always been about anxiety. Its central premise is about the aftermath of a worldwide event where 2% of the global population suddenly and without explanation vanished in an instant. The questions that arose from the Sudden Departure — was this proof of God’s existence? judgement against those who remained? a warning of something to come? — were plentiful, but the stark silence from the universe when it came to answering those questions is what drove the characters of The Leftovers crazy. Some joined cults, some moved across the country, some attempted suicide, some succumbed to mental illness. The one thing that binds all of the characters on The Leftovers is that they could never know. Not how the departure happened or more importantly why.

Creator and showrunner Damon Lindelof knows a bit about large groups of agitated people demanding answers to an inscrutable and ecclesiastical event. The finale of Lost is still a trigger for many (if not most) fans of that show. And so here Lindelof sits again, although this time, moreso even than his audience demanding answers, it’s his characters themselves.

The Leftovers kicks off its third season with a scene analogous to its season 2 premiere. You’ll recall that season kicked off with what was essentially a short film about a primitive woman in ancient times giving birth to a baby after an earthquake isolated her from her people, then succumbing to a snake bite in defense of that baby. Plot-wise, it had no bearing on the rest of the season, but it set the mood for a season where catastrophic events beyond anyone’s control meant re-calibrating things like family and survival priorities. This season, we open on a flashback to a religious sect in the mid-1800s who are preparing themselves for the rapture. As prophesied dates come and go, the numbers of the faithful dwindle. The lesson, as pertains to The Leftovers, may be “try, try again, until there’s no one left who believes you.” I promise not to make everything that happens on this show a statement on Damon Lindelof’s relationship to fans, but STILL.

The big news for season 3 is that there’s a three-year time jump from the events of the season 2 finale. Time enough for the fallout from Kevin Garvey’s near-death (post-death?) experience and the Guilty Remnant’s raid of Jardin (“Miracle”), Texas to have dissipated. There’s a bit of a thrill in seeing how Lindelof has shuffled the decks between seasons — who’s romantically linked to whom? who’s not around anymore? — but more or less, our central characters seem to have regained a sense of normalcy. Kevin (Justin Theroux) finds himself in a familiar position as the chief of police in Jardin; Nora (Carrie Coon) is once again working for the Department of Sudden Departures. If season 2 felt like a purposeful shrugging off of the more hit-or-miss season 1, season 3 is inviting the ghosts of Mapleton back in.

Three years after the end of season two means we’re coming up on the seventh anniversary of the Sudden Departure. And as we see Reverend Matt (Christopher Eccleston) preach to his congregation, seven is an important number in organized religion and especially Christianity. Though Matt’s public stance is that something may or may not happen on October 14th, clearly the mood of the town is preparing for something big. Will those who departed be returning? Will another group be taken? The need for there to be some kind of answer is palpable, even among the characters who claim not to be interested in it. You won’t find a more coldly pragmatic character on the show than Nora, but in season 3 she continues to be drawn towards the great unknown of her disappeared family.

The question everything always comes down to is one of religion, which probably makes Lost fans cringe since Lindelof’s veering towards the spongily spiritual in that show’s final season went over so poorly. But where Lost was presented as science-fiction from the start, The Leftovers has always wore its spiritual questions on its sleeve. When the show began, the religious apocalyptics, numerous though they were post-Departure, were still treated like fringe lunatics. Now, in season 3, we’ve seen Justin Theroux come back from the dead and pass through an existential afterlife hotel. Things are different now. A second rapture seems increasingly likely, even sensible. Once again, it’s the ghosts of Mapleton coming back around. Figures that once seemed imaginary are now very real. And more and more, things wind back to Kevin Garvey. Do Kevin’s repeated resurrections make him a messianic figure? Some people in his life sure think so. As the canvass of The Leftovers expands in season 3 — we go to Australia, most notably — Kevin’s story seems more and more central to the show’s mythology.

But The Leftovers is great because it’s about so much more than mythology. Or answers. At its best, the show uses the Sudden Departure to set its characters off their axes and then watch them try to find their balance again. And with a cast that includes Theroux, Coon, Amy Brenneman, Regina King, Scott Glenn, and (new this season) Lindsay Duncan, it’s a pleasure just to watch them try.